BACKGROUND Jamestown was not the first European settlement in North America, but it was England's foothold in the NewWorld and the seed from which the United States sprang. The world might be a much different place had the Spanish, French, Swedish, or Dutch won the contest to control the continent. Sailing in three small ships and armed with a charter from King James I, 144 settlers and seamen left England in December 1606, hungry for gold, committed to converting "savages," and seeking to colonize the New World. On May 14, 1607, they reached their destination and came ashore 60 miles from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, where they would be safe from Spanish warships. Vowing "never to leave," they christened the inhospitable marshy peninsula on which they had landed Jamestown. Next year, Jamestown, in present-day Virginia, celebrates its 400th anniversary. The story of the oldest permanent English settlement in North America has been largely overshadowed by the saga of the Pilgrims, who came more than a decade later. But America might have become a very different place if Jamestown's settlers had failed to gain a foothold--and the Spanish, Dutch, or French had instead established dominion over North America. The success of Jamestown was hardly a foregone conclusion. The original settlers were met by hostile native tribes not happy about Europeans encroaching on their land. SAVED BY POCAHONTAS The most famous encounter came after the colony's leader, Captain John Smith, was captured by the Powhatan tribe. Smith was to be executed, but his life was spared by the intervention of Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's daughter, in an episode that proved critical to the life of the colony and became the stuff of literature and legend. Smith cultivated the Indians, who traded food to the hungry colonists for iron and tools. Still, disease and then famine followed. After the "starving time" during the winter of 1609-1610, only 60 of the original settlers still survived. Just three years after it was founded, the Virginia Colony was collapsing. On June 7, 1610, several dozen bedraggled settlers abandoned the New World and sailed for home. But the next morning, they were shocked to see a fleet of ships heading toward Virginia. A new governor was on his way from England with a year's worth of supplies. The settlers turned back. IN SEARCH OF PROFIT "If not for his appearance, Virginia might have gone the way of so many lost colonies," Adam Goodheart, a historian, wrote recently in The Times. Jamestown survived, with what James Horn, a historian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, has described as the three key requirements for successful colonization: private property as a stimulus for growth; a representative assembly empowered to order local affairs, which rapidly assumed broader powers; and civilian control of the military. A period of peace was ensured by the marriage of John Rolfe, a tobacco grower, to Pocahontas. That enabled the settlers to concentrate on trying to turn a profit for the Virginia Company, the London-based stock corporation that provided the financial backing for the settlement. Early on, tobacco turned out to be a lucrative crop that could be exported to England. But the settlers failed to broaden their exports to support the colony. By 1624, fed up with mismanagement and infighting that produced bankruptcy for the Virginia Company rather than a profitable economic enterprise, King James I revoked the charter he had granted the company and declared Virginia a crown colony answerable to him. Jamestown would remain its capital until the statehouse there burned down in 1698. Then, the capital was moved to Williamsburg, and Jamestown slowly disappeared. Virginia, though, emerged as the most prosperous and the most populous of the original 13 British Colonies in America. Today, the site of the Jamestown settlement is part of a 1,500 acre Colonial National Historic Park. Some historians say that Jamestown's importance as a European outpost has been overstated, pointing out that the Spanish had settled in St. Augustine, Fla., in 1565 and Santa Fe, N.M., in 1607. "The early history of what is now the United States was Spanish, not English," says Tony Horwitz, who is writing a book on the early exploration of North America, "and our denial of this heritage is rooted in age-old stereotypes that still entangle today's immigration debate." WINNERS & LOSERS History, however is written by winners, and the Spanish lost the contest to control the North American continent, relinquishing its territory to Britain, and later the United States, in various wars and treaties. Subsequent writers and historians--predominantly New Englanders--elevated the role of the Pilgrims, who landed in 1620 at Plymouth Rock in what is now Massachusetts. The North's victory in the Civil War had the effect of further diminishing Jamestown's significance in the American story. Suppose, for a moment, that Jamestown had not survived long enough to nurture the roots of British colonization. Had the Spanish, French, or Dutch colonized the mid-Atlantic, says historian James Horn, the English might never have settled in New England. Instead of Plymouth, the Pilgrims might have ended up in Guyana in South America (which they had considered as an alternative). Massachusetts settlers might have joined other Puritan groups off the coast of Central America, and islands in the West Indies. "The importance of Jamestown is understated," says Horn. "The United States evolves out of British America--they are 13 British Colonies, and if you trace back that line of development, it takes you back to Jamestown. "Without British America," he continues, "you don't get a United States as it emerges in 1776, a polity based on British institutions, religion, commerce, language. None of that happens." AMERICA'S FOUNDATION Other Jamestown legacies are less positive. Hostilities between the English and the Indians began a cycle of violence and exploitation that would last for nearly three centuries. Tobacco became a cash crop, which helped saw the colony, but still causes 400,000 deaths yearly in the U.S. alone. To maximize production and profits, the first African slaves were imported in 1619, which, Horn says, "presaged the beginning of a system of exploitation and oppression that blighted the lives of countless Africans and their African-American descendants and stigmatized American society." By the end of the 17th century, the Jamestown settlement that began the English experiment in North America had all but vanished. Today it has a permanent population of two--an archaeologist and his wife although a Jamestowne Society of living descendants still exists. While the original settlers vowed never to leave, those who survived eventually scattered. Still, Horn says, Jamestown was "England's first sustained experiment in establishing profitable commercial enterprises and stable political and social forms in the New World." Its historical roots remain deep. "Jamestown matters because it is about coming to terms with our shared past," he says, "a past painful and conflicted, but which ultimately laid the foundation for modern America."
Jamestown was not the first European settlement in North America, but it was England's foothold in the NewWorld and the seed from which the United States sprang. The world might be a much different place had the Spanish, French, Swedish, or Dutch won the contest to control the continent.
Sailing in three small ships and armed with a charter from King James I, 144 settlers and seamen left England in December 1606, hungry for gold, committed to converting "savages," and seeking to colonize the New World.
On May 14, 1607, they reached their destination and came ashore 60 miles from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, where they would be safe from Spanish warships. Vowing "never to leave," they christened the inhospitable marshy peninsula on which they had landed Jamestown. Next year, Jamestown, in present-day Virginia, celebrates its 400th anniversary.
The story of the oldest permanent English settlement in North America has been largely overshadowed by the saga of the Pilgrims, who came more than a decade later.
But America might have become a very different place if Jamestown's settlers had failed to gain a foothold--and the Spanish, Dutch, or French had instead established dominion over North America.
The success of Jamestown was hardly a foregone conclusion. The original settlers were met by hostile native tribes not happy about Europeans encroaching on their land.
SAVED BY POCAHONTAS
The most famous encounter came after the colony's leader, Captain John Smith, was captured by the Powhatan tribe. Smith was to be executed, but his life was spared by the intervention of Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's daughter, in an episode that proved critical to the life of the colony and became the stuff of literature and legend.
Smith cultivated the Indians, who traded food to the hungry colonists for iron and tools. Still, disease and then famine followed. After the "starving time" during the winter of 1609-1610, only 60 of the original settlers still survived.
Just three years after it was founded, the Virginia Colony was collapsing. On June 7, 1610, several dozen bedraggled settlers abandoned the New World and sailed for home. But the next morning, they were shocked to see a fleet of ships heading toward Virginia. A new governor was on his way from England with a year's worth of supplies. The settlers turned back.
IN SEARCH OF PROFIT
"If not for his appearance, Virginia might have gone the way of so many lost colonies," Adam Goodheart, a historian, wrote recently in The Times.
Jamestown survived, with what James Horn, a historian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, has described as the three key requirements for successful colonization: private property as a stimulus for growth; a representative assembly empowered to order local affairs, which rapidly assumed broader powers; and civilian control of the military.
A period of peace was ensured by the marriage of John Rolfe, a tobacco grower, to Pocahontas. That enabled the settlers to concentrate on trying to turn a profit for the Virginia Company, the London-based stock corporation that provided the financial backing for the settlement. Early on, tobacco turned out to be a lucrative crop that could be exported to England.
But the settlers failed to broaden their exports to support the colony. By 1624, fed up with mismanagement and infighting that produced bankruptcy for the Virginia Company rather than a profitable economic enterprise, King James I revoked the charter he had granted the company and declared Virginia a crown colony answerable to him.
Jamestown would remain its capital until the statehouse there burned down in 1698. Then, the capital was moved to Williamsburg, and Jamestown slowly disappeared.
Virginia, though, emerged as the most prosperous and the most populous of the original 13 British Colonies in America. Today, the site of the Jamestown settlement is part of a 1,500 acre Colonial National Historic Park.
Some historians say that Jamestown's importance as a European
outpost has been overstated, pointing out that the Spanish had settled in St. Augustine, Fla., in 1565 and Santa Fe, N.M., in 1607.
"The early history of what is now the United States was Spanish, not English," says Tony Horwitz, who is writing a book on the early exploration of North America, "and our denial of this heritage is rooted in age-old stereotypes that still entangle today's immigration debate."
WINNERS & LOSERS
History, however is written by winners, and the Spanish lost the contest to control the North American continent, relinquishing its territory to Britain, and later the United States, in various wars and treaties. Subsequent writers and historians--predominantly New Englanders--elevated the role of the Pilgrims, who landed in 1620 at Plymouth Rock in what is now Massachusetts. The North's victory in the Civil War had the effect of further diminishing Jamestown's significance in the American story.
Suppose, for a moment, that Jamestown had not survived long enough to nurture the roots of British colonization. Had the Spanish, French, or Dutch colonized the mid-Atlantic, says historian James Horn, the English might never have settled in New England. Instead of Plymouth, the Pilgrims might have ended up in Guyana in South America (which they had considered as an alternative). Massachusetts settlers might have joined other Puritan groups off the coast of Central America, and islands in the West Indies.
"The importance of Jamestown is understated," says Horn. "The United States evolves out of British America--they are 13 British Colonies, and if you trace back that line of development, it takes you back to Jamestown.
"Without British America," he continues, "you don't get a United States as it emerges in 1776, a polity based on British institutions, religion, commerce, language. None of that happens."
AMERICA'S FOUNDATION
Other Jamestown legacies are less positive. Hostilities between the English and the Indians began a cycle of violence and exploitation that would last for nearly three centuries. Tobacco became a cash crop, which helped saw the colony, but still causes 400,000 deaths yearly in the U.S. alone.
To maximize production and profits, the first African slaves were imported in 1619, which, Horn says, "presaged the beginning of a system of exploitation and oppression that blighted the lives of countless Africans and their African-American descendants and stigmatized American society."
By the end of the 17th century, the Jamestown settlement that began the English experiment in North America had all but vanished. Today it has a permanent population of two--an archaeologist and his wife although a Jamestowne Society of living descendants still exists.
While the original settlers vowed never to leave, those who survived eventually scattered. Still, Horn says, Jamestown was "England's first sustained experiment in establishing profitable commercial enterprises and stable political and social forms in the New World."
Its historical roots remain deep. "Jamestown matters because it is about coming to terms with our shared past," he says, "a past painful and conflicted, but which ultimately laid the foundation for modern America."